Gospel Reading:
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘If you love me you will keep my commandments. I shall ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever. If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him. Those who do not love me do not keep my words. And my word is not my own; it is the word of the one who sent me. I have said these things to you while still with you; but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.’
Further Readings:
St Cyril of Alexandria calls the Spirit of God the re-creator. The Servant of God Joseph De Piro saw the Third Person of the Trinity in the same way. In his sermons, De Prio spoke nineteen times about the Holy Spirit. In one of his homilies he explained who the Holy Spirit was for him. “He is the Third Person of the most Holy Trinity, who comes down upon the universe to re-create it.” De Piro showed that the Holy Spirit does not act on the universe from afar; he becomes one with the universe and with humanity. This is an excellent model of new evangelization. Biblically and theologically, when one uses the word creation, one generally means to create from nothing. De Piro does not speak about creation but re-creation. He emphasises that the Spirit of God takes what is already existing and remodels it, remoulds it, and gives it a new life. This concept of re-creation is like the dead bones in the book of the Prophet Ezekiel (37:1-14), which were given a new life by the sweet breeze that moves over them.
Moreover, De Piro speaks of the Holy Spirit as the, “universal partnership between God and humanity.” The Servant of God speaks explicitly about God’s union with humanity through the Holy Spirit. We need such a union; this union helps us become saints.
De Piro also said that “Like a firm and sweet breeze, God’s Spirit always accompanied us in our difficulties as a Society, and blew in the sails of our poor boat troubled by the waves.”